When I looked into claims about Congress being lazy I learned a lot about how more bills used to be passed, but the bills were small. As time went on, less bills were passed but they had more in them. Which means that saying Congress is doing less because there’s less bills doesn’t really fit reality and how you’d talk about Congress if you knew anything about Congress. But politifact scores this as mostly true with a small tidbit where an expert brings up this exact problem; go by content, not bill numbers. You have to do work and think about what Congress is doing instead of picking a number out of a hat.
Which in turn highlights the problem with all these omnibus bills where you have to vote for the bombs for genocide bill if you want school lunch funding. Doesn’t invalidate your point, but US politics is beyond bonkers.
Back in the 90s there use to be this cool thing called the “line item veto” where the president could strike certain parts of a bill and congress would need 2/3 to put it back in. Really helped with these omnibus bills, but congress didn’t like that the president could see through the bullshit and voted to take it away, so now it’s back to all or nothing
Congress didn’t take it away. The Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution doesn’t give the President the power to veto just one part of a bill. The veto is an all or nothing power. (Which also how the UK royal assent worked at the time the US Constitution was written.)
Ah thank you for the clarification
Not sure how to say this, but there is a whole other layer of discussion regarding how much of that added stuff in recent bills is functional and “on task” so to speak vs blatant “Pork” meant to buy votes from various senators. In my opinion, anything off task from the bill’s header intent does not count towards “productivity”.
I think this whole question and analysis begs the question that the number of bills passed is even a good metric. The point of Congress isn’t simply to churn out legislation for the sake of churning out legislation. And this metric sets aside other stuff Congress does completely, like confirming appointments, or overseeing the actions of Federal Departments. House Oversight Committee meetings aren’t flashy, nor do they often result in legislation. But, they are vital to keeping an eye on what the rest of the government is doing.
I won’t disagree that this Congress has been a shitshow. But, I just don’t buy that the “number of bills passed” is a particularly useful measure of Congress.
it’s also not about being “lazy” but republicans becoming more and more obstructive since newt Gingrich, and now they are even obstructing themselves. just look at how hard it is to pick a Speaker or pass a simple budget. very little is going to pass unless you have a strong majority.
